Search Engine Optimisation Tips

MODATA submits all websites on the first of each month. If required we can submit your site on a more frequent basis.

Search engine optimisation can be difficult and confusing. Knowing this we decided to put together some tips to help you with the process. They cover everything you need to know about optimising your web pages for the search engines quickly and easily. Search engine optimisation tips listed in order of importance:

1. Potential site design/set up problems.
2. Selecting the correct keywords.
3. Your title tag.
4. Your copywriting.
5. Your meta tags.
6. Your images "alt" attribute.
7. What you should not do....
8. How long it takes to get listed.

Additional search engine optimisation tips:

These tips are here because they can be useful to those that can implement them on their web site, but they are not necessary to achieve good listings in the search engines.

1. Hyperlinks.
2. Headings.

Potential Design/Set Up Problems

If your site does not use Frames, Flash, Javascript, Image Maps, or Dynamic URLs you can skip to the next tip, or go back to the main search engine optimisation tips page.Unfortunately for some of you there are some site design/set up issues that can make it very difficult for the search engines to list your web pages no matter how well you optimise and submit them. We list them here, before you get into all the optimisation tips, to hopefully save you from trying to list a site that that will be very difficult to get listed. Almost everything can be fixed or worked with one way or another before you submit. The most common problems are:

1. Sites that use Frames.
2. Sites that use Dynamic URLs.
3. Sites that use Flash.
4. Sites that use Image Maps for navigation.
5. Sites that use Javascript for navigation.

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Optimising for the Correct Keywords

To get listed correctly in the search engines each page of your site that you want listed needs to be optimised to the best of your ability. Since the keywords that you decide to target will be used throughout the optimisation process choosing the right keywords is essential. If you choose the wrong keywords you will not be found in the search engines. If you are not found in the search engines how will anyone find your site?Since the keywords you choose to optimise your pages with are so important we have put together some tips to help you make sure that you make the right choices. You should utilize these tips when selecting keywords for each page that you plan to submit to the search engines.

1. Think "specific keyword phrases" not "keywords". Why? Due to the extreme amount of competition for general terms in the search engines, if your keyword phrases are too general it is very unlikely you will rank well in the search engines. You stand a far better chance to rank well for specific phrases where there is less competition. The resulting traffic, since it is more highly targeted, should also be much higher quality too!

2. Try to think like your target audience. What would they search for when looking for the page you are optimising? It is very easy to fall in the trap of coming up with a short list of what YOU would search for, but what about everyone else? They will not necessarily use the same keywords as you. You should try to come up with as many keyword phrases as you can think of that relate to the page you are optimising. Try asking a few friends and family what they would search for when searching for a site like yours.

3. Check out your competition for ideas. Do a search using keywords that you already know you want to target and click through on the top sites that come up. Once on the site view the source HTML code and view the keywords they have in their meta tags - this should give you many more ideas! Make sure to only use keywords that relate to YOUR site or page. To view the HTML code simply click the 'View' at the top of your web browser then select 'Source', or 'Page Source'.

4. You should develop a list of keyword phrases, following the tips on this page, for each page that you optimise for the search engines.
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Optimising Your Title Tag

Without question the title tag of your page is the single most important factor to consider when optimising your web page for the search engines. This is because most engines & directories place a high level of importance on keywords that are found in your title tag. The title tag is also what the search engines usually use for the title of your listing in the search results.

What it looks like:

Here's the title tag of this page:

<TITLE>Your Title Tag - learn to optimise your title tag</TITLE>

Where it belongs:The correct placement for the title tag is between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags within the HTML that makes up your page.

Tag limits:

We recommend that your title tag be between 50-80 characters long - including spaces! The length that the different search engines accept varies, but as long as you keep within this limit you should be ok.

Tag tips:

• We recommend that you include 1-2 of your most important keyword phrases in the title tag, BUT be careful not to just list keywords. If you just list keywords you risk being viewed as a spamming the engines which can ultimately lead to you being blacklisted by the search engines. Your title tag should include your keyword phrases while remaining as close to a readable sentence as possible to avoid any problems.
• Make your title enticing! Don't forget that even if you get that #1 listing in the search engines your listing still needs to say something that makes the surfer want to clickthrough and visit your site.
• Since the length of your title tag could be a little long for some engines we suggest placing the keywords at the beginning of the tag when possible so that you do not risk having them cut off.
• Each page of your site should have it's own title tag with it's own keywords that related to the page that it appears on.

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Optimising Your Page Copy

The copy on your page is also very important in order to achieve better search engine listings. Actually, it is very close to being as important as your title tag so make sure you keep reading! By 'copy' we mean the actual text that a visitor to your site would read.

Did you know that just like a visitor to your site would read the copy on your page to figure out what you have to offer, the search engines do too? And what do you think the search engines are looking for when they 'read' your page copy? Keyword phrases, of course!

Page text tips:

For best results we recommend that each page you submit has at least 200 words of copy on it. There is some cases where this much text can be difficult to put on a page, but the search engines really like it so you should do your best to increase the amount of copy where you can.

• This text should include your most important keyword phrases, but should remain logical & readable.
• Be sure to use those phrases that you have used in your other tags (i.e. metas, alt, headings, title, etc.) during the optimisation process.
• Add additional copy filled pages to your site. For example, how-to articles, tips or tutorials. These types of content pages not only help you in the search engines, but many other sites will link to them too.
• Don't ignore this tip! Seriously, optimising your page copy is one of the most important things you could possibly do to improve your listings in the search engines. So, make sure you have plenty of it even if you need to redesign your site to work it in!

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Optimising Your Meta Tags

Meta tags were originally created to help search engines find out important information about your page that they might have had difficulty determining otherwise. For example, related keywords or a description of the page itself.

Many people incorrectly believe that good meta tags are all that is needed to achieve good listings in the search engines, which is entirely incorrect. While meta tags are usually always part of a well optimised page they are not the be all and end all of optimising your pages. In the early days of the web people were able to get great listings from optimising just their meta tags, but the increasing competition for good search engine listings eventually led to many people spamming the search engines with keyword stuffed meta tags. The result is that the engines have changed what they look at when they rank a web page.

The search engines now usually look at a combination of all the best search engine tips to determine your listings, not just your metas - some don't even look at them at all! What this means is that your page should have a combination of all our tips implemented on your page - not just meta tags. That being said, there are two meta tags that can help your search engine listings - meta keywords & meta description.

What they look like:

Description Meta:

<META NAME="description" content="This would be your description of what is on your page. Your most important keyword phrases should appear in this description.">

Keywords Meta:

<META NAME="keywords" content="keywords phrase 1, keyword phrase 2, keyword phrase 3, etc.">

Where they belong:

The correct placement for both meta tags is between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags within the HTML the makes up your page. Their order does not really matter, but most people usually place the description first then the keywords meta.

Tag limits:

• We recommend that your Keywords Meta not exceed 1024 characters including spaces.
• We recommend that your Description Meta tag not exceed 250 characters including spaces.

Meta description tips:

• Make sure you accurately describe the content of your page while trying to entice visitors to click on your listing.
• Include 3-4 of your most important keyword phrases. Especially those used in your title tag and page copy.
• Try to have your most important keywords appear at the beginning of your description. This often brings better results, and will help avoid having any search engine cut off your keywords if they limit the length of your description.

Meta keywords tips:

• Aside from what we mention in the other tips below you should only use those keyword phrases that you also used in the copy of your page, title tag, meta description, and other tags. Any keywords phrases that you use that do not appear in your other tags or page copy are likely to not have enough prominence to help your listings for that phrase.
• Don't forget plurals. For example, a travel site might have both "caribbean vacation" and "caribbean vacations" in their keyword meta tag to make sure they show up in both searches.
• If you know of a common misspelling of a popular keyword that could be used to find your site you should enter it in your keywords meta tag. For example, a travel site might use "caribean " in their keyword meta since it is a common misspelling for "caribbean".
• Watch out for repeats! You want to include your most important phrases, but when doing so it can be difficult not to repeat one word many times. For example, "caribbean vacation" and "caribbean vacations" are two different phrases, but the word "caribbean" appears twice. This is okay to do in order to make sure you get the phrases you need in there, but becareful not to repeat any one word excessively. There in no actual limit, but we recommend that no one word be repeated in the keyword meta more than 5 times.
• If your site has content of interest to a specific geographic location be sure to include the actual location in your keyword meta.

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Optimising Your Images "alt" Attribute

Did you know that any images on your page can help your listings too? Each image on your page can include a keyword phrase or two that relates to the image. This text will also show up & help those that may have their images turned off when visiting your site. This does not work for all engines, but it certainly does not hurt so we recommend you give it a try where you can.

What it looks like:

<IMG SRC="SubmitItLogo.gif" width="10" height="10" alt="Submit It! Web Site Submission Service">

Where it belongs:

You can add the "alt" attribute to any image on your page.

Tag limits:

We do not recommend using more than a brief sentence or two to describe an image.

Tag tips:

• Be sure to use the keyword phrases that you also used in the copy of your page, title tag, meta description, and other tags.
• Do not try to cram a bunch of keywords into the "alt" attribute. We recommend using no more than 2-3 per image.
• Describe the image - do not just list keywords.
• The "alt" attribute is also a good place for misspellings and plural keyword phrases that you may not have used elsewhere.

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What you should not do. . . (spamming the search engines)

There are several things, considered "spamming", that you can do to try to get your page listed higher on a search engine results page. Basically, you should never try to trick a search engine in any way, or you risk being blacklisted by them. Since the majority of your traffic will come from search engines the risk far outweighs the benefits in the long run.

Below is a list of the more common things we recommend that you never do when trying to achieve better listings.

Do not:

• Do anything to trick the search engines into listing your site better. If what you are doing is not listed as one of our search engine tips the search engines will likely view it as spam and penalize you.
• List keywords anywhere except in your keywords meta tag. By "list" we mean something like - keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3, keyword 4, etc. There are very few legitimate reasons that a list of keywords would actually appear on a web page or within the page's HTML code and the search engines know this. While you may have a legitimate reason for doing this we would recommend avoiding it so that you do not risk being penalized by the search engines.
• Use the same color text on your page as the page's background color. This has often been used to keyword stuff a web page. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam.
• Use multiple instances of the same tag. For example, using more than one title tag. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam.
• Submit identical pages. For example, do not duplicate a page of your site, give the copies different file names, and submit each one. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam.
• Submit the same page to any engine more than once within 24hrs.
• Use any keywords in your keywords meta tag that do not directly relate to the content of your page.

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How Long Does it Take to Get Listed?

Here's the length of time it currently takes to get listed at each of the major search engines once you have submitted your web page.

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Optimising Text Hyperlinks

Did you know that text based hyperlinks can help improve your listing in the search engines? The search engines basically figure that if you are linking to something from your page whatever it is you are linking to is likely to be closely related to the content of your page. For that reason some of the engines actually look for keywords in the hyperlinks and any text immediately surrounding the hyperlinks. What this means to you is that if you can you should include your most important keyword phrases in the link itself and possibly the surrounding text.

What it looks like:

A text based hyperlink is a standard HTML hyperlink like this one (the example link does not fo anywhere).

Tag tips:

• Try to include your most important keyword phrases within the hyperlink itself.
• Try to include your most important keyword phrases in the text that immediately preceeds, or follows the the hyperlink.
• Becareful not to keyword stuff! Make sure your links and surrounding text are still readable and make sense after you include a keyword phrase or two.

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Optimising Heading Tags

Although they are not used very frequently any longer HTML heading tags can help improve your listings in the search engines too. Since they are "headings" the search engines figure that they are very closely related to the content of the page that they appear on. So, just like with all of your other optimisation efforts you should include your most important keyword phrases in heading tags on your page if you can.

What they look like:

HTML heading tags have 4 different sizes and are formatted as you see below.

<h1>Heading Size 1</h1>

<h2>Heading Size 2</h2>

<h3>Heading Size 3 </h3>

<h4>Heading Size 4</h4>

Where they belong: Headings can go anywhere within the HTML of your page.

Tag Tips:

• Try to include your most important keyword phrases in heading tags on your page if you can.
• Consider rethinking your page content. It is often very easy to take an existing page full of copy and find ways to break it up into separate sections with headings.

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Optimising Frames

If your site uses frames, you've got problems - as far as the search engines are concerned anyway!
The problem is that search engines do not index framed sites very well. In fact, the search engines do such a poor job of indexing frames that we recommend redesigning your site without them if you want to get good listings in the search engines.

Now, if your site must use frames there are some tips we recommend you implement to make sure that you get the best listings you can even with frames.

The problem:
A frame is exactly what the name conveys - they are an HTML page that "frames" other HTML pages. Now, the problem arises when you go to submit. In most cases a framed site will only have one page you can submit, the home page. Since your site uses frames the home page actually has nothing that the search engine can use (i.e. page copy) to determine how to list your site. Why? Because your home page is actually a frameset which does not have any real content.

Here's an example that should help you see what we mean. Keep in mind this code is what the search engines see:
Example Code of a Site Using Frames
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Example Framed Site</TITLE></HEAD><FRAMESET cols="150,*"><FRAME name="contents" target="main"><FRAME name="main"></FRAMESET></HTML>

We can't explain everything about frames here, but you should easily be able to see in the above example that their is no real content for the search engine to use to determine how to list your site. All that is there is HTML code. The result is a framed site will often not get listed at all, and if it does it will usually be listed very poorly.
The solution:
Not really a "solution" (the solution would be to get rid of the frames!), but the best thing you can do to improve your results is to use the <noframes> tag within your frameset. This tag was originally used for displaying content to people using older web browsers that did not support viewing frames. While just about all web browsers now support frames the <noframes> tag can still be used for content that will help your framed site get listed. In addition, you should also implement the best title tag, and meta tags that you can.
Where it belongs:
The <noframes> tag belongs just before the </frameset> tag for your frameset, as you can see below in red.

Example Code of a Site Using Frames with <NOFRAMES> Tag

<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Example Framed Site</TITLE></HEAD><FRAMESET cols="150,*"><FRAME name="contents" target="main"><FRAME name="main"><NOFRAMES>optimised page content goes here for best results.</NOFRAMES></FRAMESET></HTML>

Tag tips:

• 
  Place optimised content within the <body> tags that you see above within the <noframes> tag. An easy way to do this is to create a new regular (not framed) home page for your site that describes your site, products & services. Often the content can be taken directly from one of your existing framed pages. Once you have the page created view the HTML of the page and copy everything from within the <body> and </body> tags. Then paste the new content within the <body> and </body> tags found within the <noframes> tags of your frameset. A complete page (including all the HTML) can be placed within the body tags.
  
• Search engines like simple HTML pages, so since it is very unlikely anyone will ever see this <noframes> content we recommend keeping it very simple and text based for best results.
  
• Make sure all your <noframes> content is optimised following all our tips. If it is not optimised, it is not going to help you very much.
  
• Include links in the <noframes> content to all of the other important pages on your site so that the search engine will crawl and index them too.
  
• Implement the best title tag, and meta tags that you can on the frameset page
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Sites That Use Dynamic URLs

Most search engines cannot or will not list any dynamic URLs. Dynamic URLs are most commonly used on database driven sites, or sites that are running scripts. They commonly look something like this one from MSN Search:
http://search.msn.com/results.asp?q=dynamic+url

If your URL contains any of the following elements it is considered a Dynamic URL as far as the search engines are concerned:
?, &, %, +, =, $, cgi-bin, .cgi
(commas above are just used as a separator)
If your URL contains any of the above elements it is very unlikely that it will get listed at any of the major search engines. We recommend that you submitting a different URL that is not dynamic if possible. If all of your URLs are dynamic you should probably consider making static pages (i.e. not dynamic) with URLs that do not contain any of the elements noted above so that you can get listed in the search engines.

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Sites That Use Flash

Flash itself is not the problem. The problem is how it is used. The 2 largest problems with how Flash is used are:

• Flash is often used on home pages as a "splash" page. The problem with these splash pages is that many times they are made entirely from Flash, which the search engines can't index. That means your splash page will not get listed. Your best bet search engine wise is to avoid submitting any page that is made mostly of Flash. If you must submit a page that is mostly Flash you can improve your chances of getting listed by to adding as much page copy to the page that you can. You should also make sure you have good meta tags and title tag.
• Hyperlinks made with Flash can't be spidered by the search engines. Normally, when you submit a page to a search engine you can expect the search engine to follow the links on the page you submitted and spider the rest of your site, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, unless you have (or add) standard HTML hyperlinks to the other pages of your site none of your other pages will be able to get spidered by the search engines, which is a bad thing. An easy way fix this problem is to create a site map page uses standard HTML links to link to every page on your site. Then add a standard HTML link on each page of your site that links to the site map.

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Sites That Use Image Maps for Navigation

Due to the code that makes up an image map search engines often get trapped in them and can't spider your site. If you use image maps for your main site navigation you should consider switching to standard HTML hyperlinks or your site will most likely not get spidered. If you want to keep the image maps you can, but you should add another navigation scheme to your site that uses only standard HTML hyperlinks so that your site will get spidered. An easy way to do this is to create a site map page uses standard HTML links to link to every page on your site. Then add a standard HTML link on each page of your site that links to the site map.

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Sites That Use Javascript for Navigation

Search engines can't follow links that are within Javascript, so your site will not get spidered unless you also have some form standard HTML hyperlinks that they can follow. You should add some form standard HTML hyperlinks to all of your pages on each of your pages so that your site will be spidered properly. An easy way to do this is to create a site map page uses standard HTML links to link to every page on your site. Then add a standard HTML link on each page of your site that links to the site map.